Syla Pravdy director receives email threatening bomb attacks across Ukraine

Yuriy Horbach, the director of the Investigative Journalism Center for "Syla Pravdy", received an email threatening bomb attacks in Kyiv and Odesa oblasts to his personal inbox.

He reported this to Maya Holub, the Institute of Mass Information representative in Volyn oblast.

According to Yuriy, the sender called themselves “Ilya Ustimovych Yizhak” and the letter with the subject line “Outgoing No. 7633” came from the address [email protected]. The sender wrote that they had planted an explosive device and listed the addresses of seven buildings in Kyiv and one in Odesa, including the Indonesian embassy in Kyiv, two shopping malls, the Channel 5 office, school No. 86 in Odesa, a hospital in Kyiv, and one building in Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi district.

The letter closed with a threat to plant 30 explosive devices at the other addresses.

On November 26, 2024, several Ukrainian media outlets and media offices received anonymous emails warning of bombs planted in various institutions across Ukraine. In particular, such letters were received by the Vilne Radio CEO Anastasia Shybiko, the chief editor of Kharkiv's news outlet Dumka Yuriy Larin, the IMI representative Valentyna Troyan, the media outlets The Page and Speka.

On October 14, 2024, multiple national and regional media outlets and journalists received identical emails with bomb threats. Such letters arrived to several Suspilne branches, Ukrainian Pravda, Detector Media, LIGA.net, Poltavska Dumka, Kremenchutska Hazeta, Syla Pravdy, etc.

The emails list the Radio Liberty journalists whom the senders blame for the supposed terrorist act. These are Iryna Sysak, Valeria Yehoshyna, and Yulia Khymeryk, who are the authors of the Radio Liberty investigation into the FSB's recruitment of Ukrainian children to set fire to UAF cars.

The senders asked to give all the credit to "the terrorist group Fire Cells Group". The police checked all the buildings where bombs were said to have been planted and said that the threats were false and came from Russian IP addresses.